How did the Cold Food Festival evolve into Tomb-Sweeping Day?

The evolution of Cold Food Festival into Tomb-Sweeping Day has gone through three stages:

One is the irrelevant stage.

Before Sui and Tang Dynasties, "Tomb-Sweeping Day" only refers to one of the 24 solar terms, which is used to distinguish between seasonal alternation and farming operations. The main item of the Cold Food Festival is that every family is forbidden to eat cold food, and the time is in the cold winter.

The second is the stage of mutual blending.

During the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties, the time of the Cold Food Festival was set at "150" from winter to the future, just one or two days before Tomb-Sweeping Day, and the content of "Going to the grave on the Cold Food Festival has gradually become a custom, and it is appropriate to go to the grave together" was added.

Third, Tomb-Sweeping Day gradually replaced the stage of the Cold Food Festival.

With the passage of time, as the main items of the Cold Food Festival, the prohibition of smoking and cold food was gradually diluted, and the Cold Food Festival was gradually replaced by Tomb-Sweeping Day. By the Qing Dynasty, some popular items of the Cold Food Festival were no longer popular, while folk grave-sweeping, official altar and imperial tomb became the main activities of the festival. During this period, although the name of "cold food" appeared from time to time in some documents, local chronicles and literati works, the title of "Qingming" became the mainstream. Tomb-Sweeping Day is borrowed from the Cold Food Festival. It is only one or two days away from Tomb-Sweeping Day, so it is naturally borrowed by the latter. The cultural basis of this kind of borrowing is people's habitual psychology of the festival, which is passed down from generation to generation and accumulated over time.